FM radio on iPhone ??

SpaceTime

Can people not have a reasonable discussion about iPhones without it turning into some kind of religious war?

Apple made a decision not to include FM radio. Most other smartphones including any high end android in the same marketing space as the iPhone include FM radio.

It's nonsense to suggest that FM is dead.

Dades

SpaceTime wrote: »

Can people not have a reasonable discussion about iPhones without it turning into some kind of religious war?

There is no war - just a poster who mistakenly believes that lamenting the non-inclusion of a feature is the realm of haters and apple-bashers, rather than opinion.

seamus wrote: »

On the OP's question, I talk about this every chance I get:
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Ericsson-MW-600-Bluetooth-Headphones/dp/B0038M3H4S

Bluetooth headphones with built-in FM radio. Essentially like having an iPhone with FM radio. I love them.

seamus, can you stop/start/skip podcasts & music - and also switch between the iPhone and FM as a source from the MW600?

Dave!

If there are tradeoffs required to retain older technologies, e.g. the Macbook Air would have to be thicker to accommodate a disk drive, then you can understand the decision, but as mentioned, you can probably include the FM radio for free by adding the antenna to the headphones.

So I'd say it's a business decision. Which is fair enough. It's not something that I'd be too fussed about anyway.

seamus

Dades wrote: »

seamus, can you stop/start/skip podcasts & music - and also switch between the iPhone and FM as a source from the MW600?

Yes. It's fully A2DP compliant and works brilliantly for phone calls too, I've used it on the bike and nobody has complained about the sound quality or wind noise, etc.

You can pair it with 3 devices, and as I understand it, it will work with all 3 devices simultaneously (i.e. you can play music from a laptop over bluetooth and your phone can cut in to take a phone call without you have to do anything). I've never used it like that though, so YMMV.

I'm really confused as to why nobody else makes anything like it, and why it's not more popular.

SpaceTime

I would actually suspect that FM radio's likely to be one of the longest-lasting analogue transmission technologies that we have.

It's cheap, effective, produces excellent quality audio and unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Analogue television bowed out over the last decade as we all moved to digital platforms, but until something viable comes up to replace analogue FM stereo, I can't see it disappearing. It's an excellent way of delivering audio content to a mass audience very cheaply.

DAB unfortunately was a solution in search of a problem. It's been a disastrous product in almost every market that it's launched in. The only country that has a wide range of DAB channels on air is the UK and that's mostly because the BBC nailed itself to the technology and will not stop spending money on it even though almost all the commercial broadcasters pulled out.

I would ultimately think that what we'll see is streaming services being built into the mobile networks so that they'll be able to deliver an array of broadcast content to handsets for 'radio' along side on-demand streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, iTunes Radio, Tune-In radio, Google Music etc etc without putting undue strain on resources and choking networks up.

It's already done for television in properly implemented IPTV platforms like eircom's eVision setup.

However, I think the next big old technology that's going to die out faster than we think is POTS / PSTN telephony i.e. traditional landline technology delivered by your friendly local 1980s-era digital exchange. Mobile phones in Ireland now outnumber landlines by a huge factor and a very large % of landlines are delivered by alternative technologies i.e. VoIP in the case of UPC and a lot of business phones. Eircom's (and everyone else) has now also included VoIP tech in their 'fibre' routers, so anyone switching to e-fibre or equivalent products will have options to drop the exchange dial tone at some stage.

Mobiles : 5,438,144
Landlines: 1,639,054
(Q2, 2013 -- happened to have them in front of me)

I'd give traditional POTS/PSTN services another 10 years absolute max in the developed world. In a lot of cases the companies that built the digital exchanges that provide the service are phasing out support for them so that'll just push migration even faster.

murpho999

Piliger wrote: »

Oh come on ... If you can afford an iPhone you can surely afford a tenner for data ?

Bloody hell this reeks of arrogance.

The issue is not money but connectivity and availability.

I travel on the Dart everyday and no matter what network you are with or if you are on Irish Rails awful, albeit free wifi you are going to lose network at some point.

This just does not happen with a simple FM radio and it should be on the phone, simple as that.

SpaceTime

Irish Rails system blocks streaming as it's only really meant for browsing the web.

It's backhaulled over 3G mobile data. The advantage is that it's probably using multiple links and has antennae on the roof of the train so you will get signal where a mobile handset it USB dongle might struggle.

The DART is problematic because the line runs in the shadow of the coast for a lot of the route so the mobile reception isn't great. Not much you can do about that unless they installed repeaters or some kind of a system to carry signals out of the shadow area.

And yes, for a lot of customers data is expensive. There are a few networks with good prepay data though : three and tesco come to mind.

It's worth doing some shopping around. If you're in an urban area you should have good 3G on all networks.

Dades

Sandymount DART station is a guaranteed signal drop when listening to Internet radio.

murpho999

SpaceTime wrote: »

Irish Rails system blocks streaming as it's only really meant for browsing the web.

It's backhaulled over 3G mobile data. The advantage is that it's probably using multiple links and has antennae on the roof of the train so you will get signal where a mobile handset it USB dongle might struggle.

The DART is problematic because the line runs in the shadow of the coast for a lot of the route so the mobile reception isn't great. Not much you can do about that unless they installed repeaters or some kind of a system to carry signals out of the shadow area.

And yes, for a lot of customers data is expensive. There are a few networks with good prepay data though : three and tesco come to mind.

It's worth doing some shopping around. If you're in an urban area you should have good 3G on all networks.

It blocks streaming sites like You Tube but radio stations are not blocked.

Either way the Irish Rail wifi is awful, from having to logon and accept conditions every time, to dropping of network and poor speeds it's almost unusable.

As for 3g network, not buying this shadow thing, as there is no Meteor 3g coverage coming into Dun Laoghaire and it does not pick up till Blackrock.

Either way that is not the point, the main point is that no 3G network is perfect and WIFI is not always available and FM coverage that is everywhere and free should be an option.

Dublin Spur

murpho999 wrote: »

the main point is that no 3G network is perfect and WIFI is not always available and FM coverage that is everywhere and free should be an option.

simple isn't it ?

SpaceTime

murpho999 wrote: »

It blocks streaming sites like You Tube but radio stations are not blocked.

Either way the Irish Rail wifi is awful, from having to logon and accept conditions every time, to dropping of network and poor speeds it's almost unusable.

As for 3g network, not buying this shadow thing, as there is no Meteor 3g coverage coming into Dun Laoghaire and it does not pick up till Blackrock.

Either way that is not the point, the main point is that no 3G network is perfect and WIFI is not always available and FM coverage that is everywhere and free should be an option.

That would be a shadow alright. The train's well hidden down below street level at that part of the route.

The transmitters are on high points on land so if there's a large lump of rock (i.e. a cliff) between you and there, it's not going to work very well.

If you think about it. City Centre to Blackrock is pretty flat with open flat beach / mudflats at Booterstown. Then all of a sudden at Blackrock it becomes hilly and the train's quite low down following the coast. Then the whole way out past Dalkey, it's pretty low down and comes in below street level to Dun Laoghaire.

The only way you'd get proper mobile coverage on that would be to put some kind of 'leaky feeder' in. That's effectively a specially designed coaxial cable with cuts in it. That would basically pick up and passively pass through any mobile signals.

If you ran something like that along the hilly bits, you'd get a signal. They do that in tunnels.

Zcott

Not Apple's problem that the networks aren't up to the task. Apple made great hardware, now it's up to the networks to match that.

SpaceTime

The networks have nothing to do with it. It's a waste of bandwidth to stream radio that's available locally on FM.

Current generation mobile nets aren't really capable of providing perfect streaming on the move without the odd dropout and buffering moment. It's not realistic to expect them to either with 3G technology and 4G is only rolling out. It's not universally available anywhere in the world and in many cases has a low data caps. So, any hardware designer who was keen on providing radio on their devices would know this and would design the hardware appropriately.

Meteor's current unlimited data offers are unusual in an international context. For example, most UK 4G plans are dire in terms of caps.

As I've said in previous posts multicast IP delivery of audio to handsets over a mobile network doesn't exist yet and isn't supported by Apple or the mobile nets.

So really it's just a decision to push people to iTunes for profit and not implement a commonly available feature on almost every equivalent smartphone.
That's their decision but it's nothing to do with the quality if their hardware or the mobile operators technology either.

If Apple wanted to they could have included it. It's really no big deal and it wouldn't add to the thickness or weight of the phone if the radio chipset's already able to support it off-the-shelf. The FM antenna's usually the headphone cable.
All you'd need is an FM radio app and to implement it in software and provide a connection to the headphone cable to pick up the FM signal.

However, all that being said, it's not putting people off buying iPhones, so I don't think it's an issue for Apple.

If they did implement an FM radio with good RDS, it would be quite handy.

FM radio can also be used to generate music sales. For example, I've seen it setup where you can click on Shazam and get a track name while listening to the radio and then be referred to a music store to buy it.

Apple and other companies make decisions not to include features. That does not mean that

'Not Apple's problem that the networks aren't up to the task. Apple made great hardware, now it's up to the networks to match that.'. Rather, it's just a decision their designers made not to include a particular feature.

.

What it says is that Apple doesn't particularly care about FM radio reception on their devices and would probably rather you shop on the iTunes store than listen to a commercial FM station.

3G and 4G data networks are as good as they can be given the constraints of the technology and to be honest, I don't see the point in slagging off one rather amazing technology because a consumer device manufacturer opts not to include a particular feature in a phone.

I'd argue that Apple would definitely prefer that you purchased all your music and didn't listen to streams at all. I doubt they're huge fans of Spotify or TuneIn either.

If you're buying an iPhone, you just need to be aware that it has no FM radio. If you don't like that, there are other handset choices out there that do. If you like an iPhone, buy an iPhone!

copacetic

seamus wrote: »

Yes. It's fully A2DP compliant and works brilliantly for phone calls too, I've used it on the bike and nobody has complained about the sound quality or wind noise, etc.

You can pair it with 3 devices, and as I understand it, it will work with all 3 devices simultaneously (i.e. you can play music from a laptop over bluetooth and your phone can cut in to take a phone call without you have to do anything). I've never used it like that though, so YMMV.

I'm really confused as to why nobody else makes anything like it, and why it's not more popular.

I've had it for quiet a while also and like yourself probably spent a lot of time looking for something like it. I've found I've stopped using it though as the number display was a bit erratic and always started with just the number for a couple of seconds before transitioning to the contact name? Or possibly because it was a bit impractical if wearing something that it didn't clip to easily.

copacetic

Dave! wrote: »

If there are tradeoffs required to retain older technologies, e.g. the Macbook Air would have to be thicker to accommodate a disk drive, then you can understand the decision, but as mentioned, you can probably include the FM radio for free by adding the antenna to the headphones.

So I'd say it's a business decision. Which is fair enough. It's not something that I'd be too fussed about anyway.

There is no probably about it, the iPhone headphones (and all apple headphones) work perfectly with the nano as an aerial.

So there is absolute nothing needing to be done on iPhone except enable the app. No cost, no hardware work, nothing at all. It's crippled as a business decision.

It's laughable that people think there is a valid reason for it outside of that. Or that people who would like the option but have loads of apple devices anyway are somehow anti apple. The worst kind of fanboy can't see the wood for the trees.

SpaceTime

I quite like the iPhone, I just would like the option of an FM radio too and I don't buy the argument that it's like the removal of optical drives or floppy disks on iMacs.

FM's not a deprecated technology and it's not likely to be for quite a long time until something better replaces it. Mobile networks are just not able to do multicasting / broadcasting yet and DAB isn't included in any mobile phone as it's awful technology.

I think this notion that anyone who dares say that an Apple device could be better with X or Y feature is somehow anti-Apple is ridiculous.

That kind of obsessive fan type reaction actually does Apple's brand no good at all as it comes across like some kind of cult-like behaviour. I don't think Apple itself encourages it, it's just a cohort of people who seem to think that Apple products can never, ever be flawed.

The reality is that all electronic devices, OSs, software, etc can be improved upon and competition between Apple, Google, Samsung, Nokia/MS, Spotify, etc etc is really healthy and drives innovation.

The worst scenario possible would be where one company had an absolute monopoly on everything, yet that's how some Apple (and also increasingly Google) fans seem to think.

These are technology companies, not football clubs!

I use a MacBook Pro and Final Cut, Logic etc and I use windows for other things and I alternate between android and iOS devices all the time.
At the end of the day, I just want whatever product works best for me.

Piliger

My god ... still bitching and moaning about old FM. So Sad.

vinnycoyne

Piliger wrote: »

My god ... still bitching and moaning about old FM. So Sad.

If you have nothing constructive to contribute to this thread, I would recommend that you refrain from posting. Thanks.